Live data from Hacker News

Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

nationalreview.com

231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#231

Robert Graham [1] pointed out that if the emails are authentic, they can be trivially verified via DKIM. That the email metadata was not released implies the emails are either inauthentic, or that the post did not contact someone with basic competence in computer forensics. Either possibility seriously undercuts the article's credibility. [1] https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717

don't forget this is politics and the campaign is asking the other campaign to make a statement that the emails are inauthentic.

revealing the dkim signatures at a later point would be twice as effective from a political and public opinion standpoint.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#232

Let's be honest, the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left. Controlling "disinformation" is a dog whistle for censorship, hoping that average citizens don't realize what they're really after. We all know who is going to be the moderators in flagging "disinformation" and we all know which ideology they overwhelmingly favor. I'd sooner trust a pyromaniac as fire chief of my local county than I wou…

The only reason measures to curb disinformation would have a partisan impact is because conservative parties (throughout the industrialized world, not just in the US) use disinformation strategies far, far more than do other parties.

Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it for the better. There's no need for center-left parties to lie that their electoral opponents eat babies when their electoral opponents actually put children in cages.

In contrast, right wing parties overcome the inherent unpopularity of their revealed policy platforms (running on platforms of cutting taxes on the very rich while making life harder for the average person is not popular) by using disinformation to make a stated platform based on fabricated wedge issues. Hence, the imaginary convoys of South American migrants that were about to storm the US-Mexico border in 2018.

As such, restricting disinformation will have a partisan impact. Within the US, there is no Democratic equivalent to Qanon, so anti-disinformation measures that impact the likes of Qanon will have no impact on the Democratic party whatsoever. This, however, isn't a bad thing.

Functioning societies can have zero tolerance for 'alternative facts.' Disagree over goals and interpretations, but facts must be accepted by all. Democracy requires an informed electorate and there can be no functioning democracy when one side is free to invent its own version of reality.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#233
post #64

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 to an article with more information. If there's a more informative source, we can change it again. Edit: I've changed it from https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos... to what looks like it may be a more neutral source. Other users have supplied these related links: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-h…

Thanks for the transparency. I sincerely mean it

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#234

If I was a Twitter or Facebook investor, I have one question: What did you expect was going to happen? Honestly. Did nobody have the foresight at Facebook or Twitter to think that this wouldn't blow up? Did nobody think, just once, that this might invite regulatory action or be in news headlines? And if honestly nobody thought this might happen, I'd want the entire management and "safety" team replaced for having no…

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

Did twitter censor all stories regarding the claim that Trump paid $750 in taxes?

In case the point I’m making isn’t obvious: the NYT never published their source for that, and still haven’t. If twitter is removing stories for having dubious sources, then that story should not pass muster either.

If they’re removing stories for having “hacked” (or in the case of both this story about Hunter Biden, or Trumps taxes: “leaked”) sources, then discussion of BOTH of these stories should be banned.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#235
post #64

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 to an article with more information. If there's a more informative source, we can change it again. Edit: I've changed it from https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos... to what looks like it may be a more neutral source. Other users have supplied these related links: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-h…

One issue now is that the title mentions Facebook but the linked article does not, which is somewhat confusing.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#237
post #64

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 to an article with more information. If there's a more informative source, we can change it again. Edit: I've changed it from https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos... to what looks like it may be a more neutral source. Other users have supplied these related links: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-h…

I question if the National Review is really the best home for this story.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#238

I don't know what's going on with the article in question, but I read this: > Facebook announced it would limit the sharing of the story while fact-checkers reviewed the piece. And immediately realize, this is it. Facebook is a publisher, not a platform.

Paraphrasing for a HN comment I saw a while back. A reverse chronological feed of your friends’ posts is a platform. A recommendation engine is a publisher. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#239

Just step back a little and consider the alternatives here. NYP is pretty obviously smearing for a major civil event here, a civil event that has the potential of causing serious harm to the second largest democracy in the world. If the social media companies would just allow this smearing to go unhindered, they are basically saying: “We don’t care if bad actors use our platform to undermine our democracy,” which is…

We live in a country where we have elected officials and laws to deal with individuals and organizations that undermine our democracy. I don't need some random collective of people headquarted in a random state to decide those things for me.

> We live in a country where we have elected officials and laws to deal with individuals and organizations that undermine our democracy.

This is not entirely true. I’m not sure what the law is on slander (which would be the law in question here, I believe), and if social media companies would be breaking the law if they allow slander to be distributed on their platform.

But regardless if it turns out that the story is bogus, and the NYP is charged with slander, but this article had a widespread distribution and is successful in swaying voters on a false claim. Then the damage to democracy is quite significant, but the NYP gets away with a fairly minor charge of slander.

Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

#240

If I was a Twitter or Facebook investor, I have one question: What did you expect was going to happen? Honestly. Did nobody have the foresight at Facebook or Twitter to think that this wouldn't blow up? Did nobody think, just once, that this might invite regulatory action or be in news headlines? And if honestly nobody thought this might happen, I'd want the entire management and "safety" team replaced for having no…

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

The media commonly relies on second hand accounts of leaked documents ("persons familiar with the contents of [X] document"), including private documents.

Something like this has never been censored before.

It's not like they are taking down a post from a nobody. The NY Post is a major publication.

It's twitter saying they know better than the NY Post. That is a major step that I don't think has ever been taken before.

Post reply on HN